Challenges Between Black Men and Women

Chapman Article:
I feel like the first solution would be to strengthen the black family but most importantly the black males in the family.  Encouraging them to succeed and have more educational goals as opposed to goals that entail making into a professional sport, would benefit the community and bring the ratio of men and women that are educated closer together.  Secondly, providing more positive images in the media would help demolish some of the negative stereotypes we have circulating amongst the community.  It would help black women be respected for more than their bodies and allow men the opportunity to show that they are than their brute strength and that they are capable of bearing children and taking responsibility.  Lastly,  I feel that if when dating men and women really took things slow and planned for a life that this could benefit the black relationship positively.  This would also give them the opportunity to really get to know one another and build their relationship before having children out of wedlock and beginning a marriage in an already unstable environment

A Counseling Perspective

Stereotypes about black men and women have put these two at odds, negatively impacting the black family.  It has made them incompatible because they automatically assume the worse of each other.  The 3 areas of Issues and Approaches addressed were enhancing effective communication, confronting negative stereotypes and processing grief and loss.  All of these will help strengthen the black family because these are all issues that affect them greatly.

Anti-Intimacy Beliefs

1)I’m not good enough to be loved

            Many times people feel as if they can not find a partner because there is something wrong with them.  This is the same thing that slave owners would do with slaves that they owned.  They would dehumanize them, constantly trying to devalue them and make them feel as if they were nobody, essentially making their psyche weak.  Many slaves did not feel or see love and it’s sad to say that this same psyche, because of the destruction of the black family, has caused several blacks today to continue thinking this way. 

2.) No matter what I do, it won’t make a difference

            Slaves were given no rights and were only told that they were good to work doing physical labor.  They were made to live this way through violence and verbal threats, which made them fear if they stepped out of place nothing good would come of it.  They ultimately believed that they had no control over what they could do in life and were made to believe that they could not alter their living situation even if they tried. 

Being a Man about it

Men defined manhood as holding responsibility, Being able to provide, autonomy, and maintaining spirituality.  I noted the two emerging themes in the article to be responsibility and manhood.  It was very interesting that they did not mention sexuality as criteria.  I immediately assumed men felt that their sexual conquers would have something to do with how they identified reaching manhood.